FoodBank South Africa supplies food to more than 1,000 community-based non-profit organisations countrywide. These organisations provide an invaluable service to our country by caring for the most vulnerable and marginalised among us. Staffed by people who usually work for little or no reward, they are doing remarkable work and impacting lives in far-reaching ways.
Every month, we profile an organisation that we are proud to support. This month, we highlight the work of the Ubuntu Crisis and Family Care Centre (UCFCC) in KwaZulu-Natal. We caught up with Pumla Mbelu, the founder and manager of UCFCC.
FoodBank: Pumla, what exactly does UCFCC do?
PM: We’re a community-based organisation which was established in 2002 to provide home-based care and counselling to people infected and affected by HIV/Aids in impoverished communities in the Wyebank area, which is about 25km outside Durban. The area we cover includes Kwadabeka (Clermont), Lower Molweni, eKuthuleni, Zamokuhle and also Emapepeteni in Ward 2. But our intention is to expand to other municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal and eventually nationally.
FoodBank: What prompted you to set up UCFCC?
PM: I was working for The Valley Trust as a community health worker when I realised that there was a desperate need to feed people infected and affected by HIV/Aids, particularly in the Wyebank area. I was doing health education and was horrified by the high mortality rate, creating orphans and vulnerable children and child-headed households. In very poor and deprived areas like Wyebank, there are huge numbers of orphans with no support whatsoever – because they don’t have the right papers to register for social services.
FoodBank: What impact are you having?
PM: Since the establishment of the project more than 2,000 families and sick people have benefited from home visits and HIV/Aids education and counselling. We’ve also helped many people register for grants – disability grants, foster care grants, or child support grants – and access hospital care. At present, we give care and bereavement counselling to 150 children and 75 adults living with HIV. Most of them are HIV positive and on antiretrovirals. We make sure they get at least one meal a day.
FoodBank: How do you manage to do it?
PM: It’s largely thanks to FoodBank, which is our only outside source of food. FoodBank delivers food to us once a week, which enables us to give our beneficiaries one nutritious meal a day. We get about 2.85 tonnes of food a month from FoodBank. It may sound like a lot, but it’s not enough. We are, however, very grateful for it. We have a vegetable garden; it’s about one hectare and we’re growing spinach, lettuce, green peppers, cabbage, carrots and beetroot. It’s coming along, but we’re struggling. We can’t afford to buy organic fertiliser, which is what we need.
FoodBank: You used to advocate for “one home, one garden” but you no longer do. Why?
PM: It’s not always practical. You can’t expect old grannies and young children to tend to their own food gardens. Very often they just don’t have the strength or capacity.
FoodBank: What capacity-building and developmental projects do you offer?
PM: In addition to the vegetable garden which is run by youth and women in the community, we have beading, baking and sewing projects. The object of all these projects is to equip HIV/Aids-infected and affected people with skills to enable them to sustain themselves.
FoodBank: Your project is growing from strength to strength. What do you attribute your success to?
PM: Our Board of Directors is made up of people with a wealth of experience in community development, and we have highly committed volunteers. All 30 of our childcare workers are volunteers.
If you would like to find out more about UCFCC or to help in some way, call Pumla on 031-707-6198.
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